About PITCO Engineering — Process First. Then Standardize.

Process first, then standardize — ready to put that to work for you. Talk to an Engineer

About PITCO

Engineering Beyond Horizons

OUR MISSION

Make automation work for every manufacturer.

Not just the largest. Not just the ones who can afford years of private engineering. Every manufacturer.

Every project we take on serves our mission: to make automation work for every manufacturer — whether we're planning a small shop's first automated line or wringing the last point of efficiency out of a demanding production environment. We tell the truth about what automation really takes. We choose components on fit and outcome, not on a sales quota. And we show our clients what production looks like years after commissioning, not just at handoff.

We are dedicated process engineers, controls engineers, software developers, and robotics specialists, driven by our mission. We work for the largest manufacturers and integrators in the industry, and we are putting what it taught us in reach of everyone else.

OUR VISION

Ten thousand manufacturers standardized — and an industrial base that competes on its own terms.

Our vision is to get 10,000 manufacturers standardized — ready to compete with the giants, helping to rebuild the U.S. industrial base, and loosening the economy's dependence on a supply chain that was never on our side.

Founder Maik Peters has spent almost three decades on the hard side of this problem — in R&D, on manufacturing floors, and inside automation cells. One pattern never changed: the plants that win don't automate faster, they automate the right thing.

Most of the industry has it backwards. They reach for automation to tame the chaos — and end up casting a broken process in concrete, then defending it for a decade. We do it in the only order that compounds: optimize the process until it's genuinely worth keeping, then standardize the result so it can be repeated, generated, and improved without ever starting over. Standardization has been at the center of how we work from the earliest days — never something you bolt on at the end, always what the whole approach is built around.

That single conviction is why PITCO exists today, and it's the future we're building toward — a manufacturing industry where every plant, not only the ones with decades of R&D behind them, runs on a system worth standardizing. Get the process right first, and automation stops being a cost you survive. It becomes the engine that carries the business forward.

OUR CORE VALUES

Six values. No exceptions.

A mission and a conviction only mean something if they survive contact with a real project and a real deadline. Six values keep ours honest — they shape how we engineer, how we sell, and how we hire. Miss one and the rest stop counting.

Integrity over the easy answer. Accountability when it would be simpler to point elsewhere. Transparency about what automation really takes. The discipline to do the unglamorous work that standardization demands. Alignment with what the business actually needs. And results we can deliver.

HISTORY

One idea refined over a decade: get the process right, then make it repeatable.

2016

A conviction takes hold

Almost three decades in — across R&D, manufacturing, and automation — founder Maik Peters keeps meeting the same enemy: every plant solving the same problems from scratch. Standardization is the thread that ties the good ones together.

Why

Process first, then automate

Process first, then automate, and later standardize the result. In that order, a plant excels; reverse it, and you only make the waste permanent.

A firm built on one principle

PITCO Engineering is founded to carry that principle end to end — from the first concept to the line that runs it — for manufacturers of every size, not just the ones who can afford R&D.

2024

The R&D Center

The R&D Center opens at the Dayton, Tennessee headquarters — the home of one question: how does a firm capture what it knows and deliver it as a product, instead of re-deriving it on every job?

2025

Start with Standard & AEOS

The answer. Start with Standard brings the standard to small and mid-sized manufacturers; AEOS generates against it. Process first. Standardize the result. Then repeat it at scale.

2016
A conviction takes hold

Almost three decades in — across R&D, manufacturing, and automation — founder Maik Peters keeps meeting the same enemy: every plant solving the same problems from scratch. Standardization is the thread that ties the good ones together.
Why
Process first, then automate

Process first, then automate, and later standardize the result. In that order, a plant excels; reverse it, and you only make the waste permanent.
PITCO
A firm built on one principle

PITCO Engineering is founded to carry that principle end to end — from the first concept to the line that runs it — for manufacturers of every size, not just the ones who can afford R&D.
2024
The R&D Center

The R&D Center opens at the Dayton, Tennessee headquarters — the home of one question: how does a firm capture what it knows and deliver it as a product, instead of re-deriving it on every job?
2025
Start with Standard & AEOS

The answer. Start with Standard brings the standard to small and mid-sized manufacturers; AEOS generates against it. Process first. Standardize the result. Then repeat it at scale.

OUR SERVICES

Spanning the spectrum.

Our services follow the lifecycle of an automation project — from the first concept on a whiteboard to the optimization work that happens years after the line is running.

Design & Development

At the core of our services are design and development, where engineering judgment meets technical execution. Our electrical, mechanical, and software design solutions are tailored to the specific needs of each client, ensuring the architecture we propose is not only innovative but also practical and sustainable to operate. The right design saves more — in maintenance, scrap, downtime, and operator hours — than any single piece of equipment ever will.
Deployment & Optimization

Our deployment work is characterized by precision and efficiency. We understand what it takes to integrate new systems into existing operations on a live plant floor, and our approach is engineered for a smooth transition — not a heroic startup. Once a system is running, our optimization services focus on extending the efficiency and lifespan of the machinery, blending technological advancement with the practical realities of production.
Standardization & Platform Engineering

The most recent layer of our work is standardization, delivered as a service. Start with Standard gives small and mid-sized manufacturers the engineering standard our largest clients built privately over decades. AEOS, the Agentic Industrial Engineering Platform initiated in 2025, generates against that standard — design, code, documentation — turning a manual engineering process into a repeatable one. It's the natural endpoint of the conviction the firm was built on: optimize the process, then standardize the result — and make that result repeatable.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Pioneering Research and Development.

Our Research and Development Center in Dayton, Tennessee — opened in 2024 — is the long-form home of the work that doesn't fit neatly into any one client engagement.

The Questions We're Working On

Two questions, in particular, have shaped the R&D Center since its first day. First: how does AI change the engineering work itself — not just the equipment we install, but the documents we generate, the standards we apply, and the design decisions we make? Second: what does a manufacturing workforce look like as it ages? Robotics and intelligent automation aren't a replacement for skilled operators — they're a way to keep critical expertise productive when fewer young engineers are entering the field, and to give the engineers who are still on the line tools that match the complexity of the systems they run.

From R&D to Product

The architecture that became AEOS started here. The principles that became Start with Standard were sharpened here. The R&D Center isn't separate from the engineering services work — it's the loop where the engineering services work feeds the next generation of tools, and those tools, once they're production-grade, flow back into the services we deliver. Innovation as a one-way arrow from research to product hasn't matched what we've seen in practice. The loop is closed, and it gets a little tighter with every project we deliver.

OUR ETHOS

Our Ethos and Commitment.

Three commitments run through every part of the firm — they shape how we hire, how we sell, and how we close out a project.

Collaboration and Client Focus

At PITCO Engineering, collaboration is not a strategy — it's the ethos. We work closely with our clients, understanding their challenges and aspirations so the solution we propose actually meets their needs, not the generalized needs the industry typically assumes. Our client-centric approach is what makes the difference between delivered services and delivered value.
Sustainability and Long-Lived Solutions

Sustainability is ingrained in how we approach engineering. We design for efficiency and longevity — solutions that don't have to be torn out and replaced every five years. The focus on long-lived, energy-aware practices extends across every project, from optimizing energy use on a production line to the architectural choices that determine whether a control system can adapt with the business or has to be rebuilt.
Education and Empowerment

Our roots in education continue to shape our approach. We are dedicated to empowering the next generation of engineers and scientists — through training resources, through documentation that explains why decisions were made, and through hiring practices that bring junior engineers in and grow them on real projects. The teaching instinct the firm was built on never went away; it spread across everything we do.

LOOKING AHEAD

The Future of PITCO Engineering.

As we look to the future, PITCO Engineering remains committed to being at the forefront of industrial automation — not as a generalist, but as the firm that takes the messy, undocumented, project-by-project way of doing things and replaces it with something repeatable.

Start with Standard and AEOS define that future. The standard captures what years of engineering taught us about how an automation system should be designed, named, structured, and documented. AEOS generates against that standard — turning hours of engineering into minutes of review. It's the same journey the whole firm has been on: engineering knowledge that once lived inside a single person's head increasingly lives inside a platform any manufacturer can use.

Our work going forward sits along the seam between the two: the engineering services that we deliver hands-on, and the platform that lets a manufacturer's own team carry that work forward on their own. The R&D Center stays the bridge between them, the engineering services keep the platform honest about what works in production, and the platform keeps the services from re-deriving the same answer on every job.

We're not finished. The work continues with every project we deliver, every standard we sharpen, and every manufacturer we help take their first serious step into automation. If that sounds like the kind of partner you're looking for — talk to us.

GET IN TOUCH

Ready to work together?

Process-first automation engineering — available to you. Whether you're planning a new line, scaling an existing one, or standardizing for what comes next, we want to hear about it.

LOCATIONS

Dayton, TN

Headquarters & R&D Center

Since 2022

Address: 1298 Market Street, Dayton, TN 37321
Email: info@pitcoengineering.com
Phone: 423-774-6020
Hours: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m.

Peters Industry Training and Consulting, LLC, DBA PITCO Engineering is a West Virginia registered company with its principal address at 723 Kanawha Boulevard East, Charleston, West Virginia 25301.